Sybil, Or, The Two Nations

Sybil started a little, slightly stared, but did not speak.

“I should be happy if you also would give me credit, in taking that step, at least for motives of which I need not be ashamed; even,” he added in a hesitating voice, “even if you deemed my conduct indiscreet.”

Their eyes met: astonishment was imprinted on the countenance of Sybil, but she uttered not a word; and her father, whose back was turned to them, did not move.

“I was told,” continued Egremont, “that an impassable gulf divided the Rich from the Poor; I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations, governed by different laws, influenced by different manners, with no thoughts or sympathies in common; with an innate inability of mutual comprehension. I believed that if this were indeed the case, the ruin of our common country was at hand; I would have endeavoured, feebly perchance, but not without zeal, to resist such a catastrophe; I possessed a station which entailed on me some portion of its responsibility: to obtain that knowledge which could alone qualify me for beneficial action, I resolved to live without suspicion among my fellow-subjects who were estranged from me; even void of all celebrity as I am, I could not have done that without suspicion, had I been known; they would have recoiled from my class and my name, as you yourself recoiled, Sybil, when they were once accidentally mentioned before you. These are the reasons, these the feelings, which impelled, I will not say justified, me to pass your threshold under a feigned name. I entreat you to judge kindly of my conduct; to pardon me: and not to make me feel the bitterness that I have forfeited the good opinion of one for whom, under all circumstances and in all situations, I must ever feel the highest conceivable respect,—I would say a reverential regard.”

His tones of passionate emotion ceased. Sybil, with a countenance beautiful and disturbed, gazed at him for an instant, and seemed about to speak, but her trembling lips refused the office; then with an effort, turning to Gerard, she said, “My father, I am amazed; tell me, then, who is this gentleman who addresses me?”

“The brother of Lord Marney, Sybil,” said Gerard, turning to her.

“The brother of Lord Marney!” repeated Sybil, with an air almost of stupor.

“Yes,” said Egremont: “a member of that family of sacrilege, of those oppressors of the people, whom you have denounced to me with such withering scorn.”

The elbow of Sybil rested on the arm of her chair, and her cheek upon her hand; as Egremont said these words she shaded her face, which was thus entirely unseen: for some moments there was silence. Then looking up with an expression grave but serene, and as if she had just emerged from some deep thinking, Sybil said, “I am sorry for my words; sorry for the pain I unconsciously gave you; sorry indeed for all that has past: and that my father has lost a pleasant friend.”

“And why should he be lost?” said Egremont mournfully, and yet with tenderness. “Why should we not still befriends?”

“Oh, sir!” said Sybil, haughtily; “I am one of those who believe the gulf is impassable. Yes,” she added, slightly but with singular grace waving her hands, and somewhat turning away her head, “utterly impassable.”

There are tumults of the mind when like the great convulsions of nature all seems anarchy and returning chaos, yet often in those moments of vast disturbance, as in the material strife itself, some new principle of order, or some new impulse of conduct, develops itself, and controls and regulates and brings to an harmonious consequence, passions and elements which seemed only to threaten despair and subversion. So it was with Egremont. He looked for a moment in despair upon this maiden walled out from sympathy by prejudices and convictions more impassable than all the mere consequences of class. He looked for a moment, but only for a moment, in despair. He found in his tortured spirit energies that responded to the exigency of the occasion. Even the otherwise embarrassing presence of Gerard would not have prevented—but just at this moment the door opened, and Morley and another person entered the room.

Book 4 Chapter 9

Morley paused as he recognised Egremont; then advancing to Gerard, followed by his companion, he said, “This is Mr Hatton of whom we were speaking last night, and who claims to be an ancient acquaintance of yours.”

“Perhaps I should rather say of your poor dear father,” said Hatton, scanning Gerard with his clear blue eye, and then he added, “He was of great service to me in my youth, and one is not apt to forget such things.”

“One ought not,” said Gerard: “but it is a sort of memory, as I have understood, that is rather rare. For my part I remember you very well, Baptist Hatton,” said Gerard, examining his guest with almost as complete a scrutiny as he had himself experienced. “This world has gone well with you, I am glad to hear and see.”

“Qui laborat, orat,” said Hatton in a silvery voice, “is the gracious maxim of our Holy Church; and I venture to believe my prayers and vigils have been accepted, for I have laboured in my time,” and as he was speaking these words, he turned and addressed them to Sybil.

She beheld him with no little interest; this mysterious name that had sounded so often in her young ears, and was associated with so many strange and high hopes, and some dark blending of doubt and apprehension and discordant thoughts. Hatton in his appearance realised little of the fancies in which Sybil had sometime indulged with regard to him. That appearance was prepossessing: a frank and even benevolent expression played upon his intelligent and handsome countenance: his once rich brown hair, still long though very thin, was so arranged as naturally to conceal his baldness; he was dressed with great simplicity, but with remarkable taste and care: nor did the repose and suavity of his manner and the hushed tone of his voice detract from the favourable effect that he always at once produced.

“Qui laborat, orat,” said Sybil with a smile, “is the privilege of the people.”

“Of whom I am one,” said Hatton bowing, well recollecting that he was addressing the daughter of a chartist delegate.

“But is your labour, their labour,” said Sybil. “Is yours that life of uncomplaining toil wherein there is so much of beauty and of goodness, that by the fine maxim of our Church, it is held to include the force and efficacy of prayer?”

“I am sure that I should complain of no toil that would benefit you,” said Hatton; and then addressing himself again to Gerard, he led him to a distant part of the room where they were soon engaged in earnest converse. Morley at the same moment approached Sybil, and spoke to her in a subdued tone. Egremont feeling embarrassed advanced, and bade her farewell. She rose and returned his salute with some ceremony; then hesitating while a soft expression came over her countenance, she held forth her hand, which he retained for a moment, and withdrew.

“I was with him more than an hour,” continued Morley. “At first he recollected nothing: even the name of Gerard, though he received it as familiar to him, seemed to produce little impression; he recollected nothing of any papers; was clear that they must have been quite insignificant; whatever they were, he doubtless had them now, as he never destroyed papers: would order a search to be made for them, and so on. I was about to withdraw, when he asked me carelessly a question about your father; what he was doing, and whether he were married and had children. This led to a very long conversation in which he suddenly seemed to take great interest. At first he talked of writing to see your father, and I offered that Gerard should call upon him. He took down your direction in order that he might write to your father and give him an appointment; when observing that it was Westminster, he said that his carriage was ordered to go to the House of Lords in a quarter of an hour, and that if not inconvenient to me, he would propose that I should at once accompany him. I thought, whatever might be the result, it must be a satisfaction to Gerard at last to see this man of whom he has talked and thought so much—and so we are here.”

“You did well, good Stephen, as you always do,” said Sybil with a musing and abstracted air; “no one has so much forethought and so much energy as you.”

He threw a glance at her: and immediately withdrew it. Their eyes had met: hers were kind and calm.

“And this Egremont,” said Morley rather hurriedly and abruptly, and looking on the ground, “how came he here? When we discovered him yesterday your father and myself agreed that we should not mention to you the—the mystification of which we had been dupes.”

“And you did wrong,” said Sybil. “There is no wisdom like frankness. Had you told me, he would not have been here today. He met and addressed me, and I only recognised an acquaintance who had once contributed so much to the pleasantness of our life. Had he not accompanied me to this door and met my father, which precipitated an explanation on his part which he found had not been given by others, I might have remained in an ignorance which hereafter might have produced inconvenience.”

“You are right,” said Morley, looking at her rather keenly. “We have all of us opened ourselves too unreservedly before this aristocrat.”

“I should hope that none of us have said to him a word that we wish to be forgotten,” said Sybil. “He chose to wear a disguise, and can hardly quarrel with the frankness with which we spoke of his order or his family. And for the rest, he has not been injured from learning something of the feelings of the people by living among them.”

“And yet if anything were to happen to-morrow,” said Morley, “rest assured this man has his eye on us. He can walk into the government offices like themselves and tell his tale, for though one of the pseudo-opposition, the moment the people move, the factions become united.”

Sybil turned and looked at him, and then said, “And what could happen to-morrow, that we should care for the government being acquainted with it or us? Do not they know everything? Do not you meet in their very sight? You pursue an avowed and legal aim by legal means—do you not? What then is there to fear? And why should anything happen that should make us apprehensive?”

“All is very well at this moment,” said Morley, “and all may continue well; but popular assemblies breed turbulent spirits, Sybil. Your father takes a leading part; he is a great orator, and is in his element in this clamorous and fiery life. It does not much suit me; I am a man of the closet. This Convention, as you well know, was never much to my taste. Their Charter is a coarse specific for our social evils. The spirit that would cure our ills must be of a deeper and finer mood.”

“Then why are you here?” said Sybil.

Morley shrugged his shoulders, and then said “An easy question. Questions are always easy. The fact is, in active life one cannot afford to refine. I could have wished the movement to have taken a different shape and to have worked for a different end; but it has not done this. But it is still a movement and a great one, and I must work it for my end and try to shape it to my form. If I had refused to be a leader, I should not have prevented the movement; I should only have secured my own insignificance.”

“But my father has not these fears; he is full of hope and exultation,” said Sybil. “And surely it is a great thing that the people should have their Parliament lawfully meeting in open day, and their delegates from the whole realm declaring their grievances in language which would not disgrace the conquering race which has in vain endeavoured to degrade them. When I heard my father speak the other night, my heart glowed with emotion; my eyes were suffused with tears; I was proud to be his daughter; and I gloried in a race of forefathers who belonged to the oppressed and not to the oppressors.”

Morley watched the deep splendour of her eye and the mantling of her radiant cheek, as she spoke these latter words with not merely animation but fervour. Her bright hair, that hung on either side her face in long tresses of luxuriant richness, was drawn off a forehead that was the very throne of thought and majesty, while her rich lip still quivered with the sensibility which expressed its impassioned truth.

“But your father, Sybil, stands alone,” at length Morley replied; “surrounded by votaries who have nothing but enthusiasm to recommend them; and by emulous and intriguing rivals, who watch every word and action, in order that they may discredit his conduct, and ultimately secure his downfall.”

“My father’s downfall!” said Sybil. “Is he not one of themselves! And is it possible, that among the delegates of the People there can be other than one and the same object?”

“A thousand,” said Morley; “we have already as many parties as in St Stephen’s itself.”

“You terrify me,” said Sybil. “I knew we had fearful odds to combat against. My visit to this city alone has taught me how strong are our enemies. But I believed that we had on our side God and Truth.”

“They know neither of them in the National Convention,” said Morley. “Our career will be a vulgar caricature of the bad passions and the low intrigues, the factions and the failures, of our oppressors.”

At this moment Gerard and Hatton who were sitting in the remote part of the room rose together and advanced forward; and this movement interrupted the conversation of Sybil and Morley. Before however her father and his new friend could reach them, Hatton as if some point on which he had not been sufficiently explicit, had occurred to him, stopped and placing his hand on Gerard’s arm, withdrew him again, saying in a voice which could only be heard by the individual whom he addressed. “You understand—I have not the slightest doubt myself of your moral right: I believe on every principle of justice, that Mowbray Castle is as much yours as the house that is built by the tenant on the lord’s land: but can we prove it? We never had the legal evidence. You are in error in supposing that these papers were of any vital consequence; mere memoranda; very useful no doubt: I hope I shall find them; but of no validity. If money were the only difficulty, trust me, it should not be wanting; I owe much to the memory of your father, my good Gerard; I would fain serve you—and your daughter. I’ll not tell you what I would do for you, my good Gerard. You would think me foolish; but I am alone in the world, and seeing you again, and talking of old times—I really am scarcely fit for business. Go, however, I must; I have an appointment at the House of Lords. Good bye. I must say farewell to the Lady Sybil.”

Book 4 Chapter 10

“You can’t have that table, sir, it is engaged,” said a waiter at the Athenaeum to a member of the club who seemed unmindful of the type of appropriation which in the shape of an inverted plate, ought to have warned him off the coveted premises.

“It is always engaged,” grumbled the member. “Who has taken it?”

“Mr Hatton, sir.”

And indeed at this very moment, it being about eight o’clock of the same day on which the meeting detailed in the last chapter had occurred, a very handsome dark brougham with a beautiful horse was stopping in Waterloo Place before the portico of the Athenaeum Club-house, from which equipage immediately emerged the prosperous person of Baptist Hatton.

This club was Hatton’s only relaxation. He had never entered society; and now his habits were so formed, the effort would have been a painful one; though with a first-rate reputation in his calling and supposed to be rich, the openings were numerous to a familiar intercourse with those middle-aged nameless gentlemen of easy circumstances who haunt clubs, and dine a great deal at each others’ houses and chambers; men who travel regularly a little, and gossip regularly a great deal; who lead a sort of facile, slipshod existence, doing nothing, yet mightily interested in what others do; great critics of little things; profuse in minor luxuries and inclined to the respectable practice of a decorous profligacy; peering through the window of a clubhouse as if they were discovering a planet; and usually much excited about things with which they have no concern, and personages who never heard of them.

All this was not in Hatton’s way, who was free from all pretension, and who had acquired, from his severe habits of historical research, a respect only for what was authentic. These nonentities flitted about him, and he shrunk from an existence that seemed to him at once dull and trifling. He had a few literary acquaintances that he had made at the Antiquarian Society, of which he was a distinguished member; a vice-president of that body had introduced him to the Athenaeum. It was the first and only club that Hatton had ever belonged to, and he delighted in it. He liked splendour and the light and bustle of a great establishment. They saved him from that melancholy which after a day of action is the doom of energetic celibacy. A luxurious dinner without trouble, suited him after his exhaustion; sipping his claret, he revolved his plans. Above all, he revelled in the magnificent library, and perhaps was never happier, than when after a stimulating repast he adjourned up stairs, and buried himself in an easy chair with Dugdale or Selden, or an erudite treatise on forfeiture or abeyance.

To-day however Hatton was not in this mood. He came in exhausted and excited; eat rapidly and rather ravenously; despatched a pint of champagne; and then called for a bottle of Lafitte. His table cleared; a devilled biscuit placed before him, a cool bottle and a fresh glass, he indulged in that reverie, which the tumult of his feelings and the physical requirements of existence had hitherto combined to prevent.

“A strange day,” he thought, as with an abstracted air he filled his glass, and sipping the wine, leant back in his chair. “The son of Walter Gerard! A chartist delegate! The best blood in England! What would I not be, were it mine.

“Those infernal papers! They made my fortune—and yet, I know not how it is, the deed has cost me many a pang. Yet it seemed innoxious! the old man dead—insolvent; myself starving; his son ignorant of all, to whom too they could be of no use, for it required thousands to work them, and even with thousands they could only be worked by myself. Had I not done it, I should ere this probably have been swept from the surface of the earth, worn out with penury, disease, and heart-ache. And now I am Baptist Hatton with a fortune almost large enough to buy Mowbray itself, and with knowledge that can make the proudest tremble.

“And for what object all this wealth and power? What memory shall I leave? What family shall I found? Not a relative in the world, except a solitary barbarian, from whom when, years ago I visited him as a stranger I recoiled with unutterable loathing.

“Ah! had I a child—a child like the beautiful daughter of Gerard!”

And here mechanically Hatton filled his glass, and quaffed at once a bumper.

“And I have deprived her of a principality! That seraphic being whose lustre even now haunts my vision; the ring of whose silver tone even now lingers in my ear. He must be a fiend who could injure her. I am that fiend. Let me see—let me see!”

And now he seemed wrapt in the very paradise of some creative vision; still he filled the glass, but this time he only sipped it, as if he were afraid to disturb the clustering images around him.

“Let me see—let me see. I could make her a baroness. Gerard is as much Baron Valence as Shrewsbury is a Talbot. Her name is Sybil. Curious how, even when peasants, the good blood keeps the good old family names! The Valences were ever Sybils.

“I could make her a baroness. Yes! and I could give her wherewith to endow her state. I could compensate for the broad lands which should be hers, and which perhaps through me she has forfeited.

“Could I do more? Could I restore her to the rank she would honour, assuage these sharp pangs of conscience, and achieve the secret ambition of my life? What if my son were to be Lord Valence?

“Is it too bold? A chartist delegate—a peasant’s daughter. With all that shining beauty that I witnessed, with all the marvellous gifts that their friend Morley so descanted on,—would she shrink from me? I’m not a crook-backed Richard.

“I could proffer much: I feel I could urge it plausibly. She must be very wretched. With such a form, such high imaginings, such thoughts of power and pomp as I could breathe in her,—I think she’d melt. And to one of her own faith, too! To build up a great Catholic house again; of the old blood, and the old names, and the old faith,—by holy Mary it is a glorious vision!”

Book 4 Chapter 11

On the evening of the day that Egremont had met Sybil in the Abbey of Westminster, and subsequently parted from her under circumstances so distressing, the Countess of Marney held a great assembly at the family mansion in St James Square, which Lord Marney had intended to have let to a new club, and himself and his family to have taken refuge for a short season at an hotel, but he drove so hard a bargain that before the lease was signed, the new club, which mainly consisted of an ingenious individual who had created himself secretary, had vanished. Then it was agreed that the family mansion should be inhabited for the season by the family; and to-night Arabella was receiving all that great world of which she herself was a distinguished ornament.

“We come to you as early as possible my dear Arabella,” said Lady Deloraine to her daughter-in-law.

“You are always so good! Have you seen Charles? I was in hopes he would have come,” Lady Marney added in a somewhat mournful tone.

“He is at the House: otherwise I am sure he would have been here,” said Lady Deloraine, glad that she had so good a reason for an absence, which under any circumstances she well knew would have occurred.

“I fear you will be sadly in want of beaus this evening, my love. We dined at the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine’s, and all our cavaliers vanished. They talk of an early division.”

“I really wish all these divisions were over,” said Lady Marney. “They are very anti-social. Ah! here is Lady de Mowbray.”

Alfred Mountchesney hovered round Lady Joan Fitz-Warene, who was gratified by the devotion of the Cupid of May Fair. He uttered inconceivable nothings, and she replied to him in incomprehensible somethings. Her learned profundity and his vapid lightness effectively contrasted. Occasionally he caught her eye and conveyed to her the anguish of his soul in a glance of self-complacent softness.

Lady St Julians leaning on the arm of the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine stopped to speak to Lady Joan. Lady St Julians was determined that the heiress of Mowbray should marry one of her sons. She watched therefore with a restless eye all those who attempted to monopolize Lady Joan’s attention, and contrived perpetually to interfere with their manoeuvres. In the midst of a delightful conversation that seemed to approach a crisis, Lady St Julians was sure to advance, and interfere with some affectionate appeal to Lady Joan, whom she called her “dear child” and “sweetest love,” while she did not deign even to notice the unhappy cavalier whom she had thus as it were unhorsed.

“My sweet child!” said Lady St Julians to Lady Joan, “you have no idea how unhappy Frederick is this evening, but he cannot leave the House, and I fear it will be a late affair.”

Lady Joan looked as if the absence or presence of Frederick was to her a matter of great indifference, and then she added, “I do not think the division so important as is generally imagined. A defeat upon a question of colonial government does not appear to me of sufficient weight to dissolve a cabinet.”

“Any defeat will do that now,” said Lady St Julians, “but to tell you the truth I am not very sanguine. Lady Deloraine says they will be beat: she says the radicals will desert them; but I am not so sure. Why should the radicals desert them? And what have we done for the radicals? Had we indeed foreseen this Jamaica business, and asked some of them to dinner, or given a ball or two to their wives and daughters! I am sure if I had had the least idea that we had so good a chance of coming in, I should not have cared myself to have done something; even to have invited their women.”